‘Navalny,’ About Russian Opposition Leader, Added as Surprise Film to Sundance Lineup

Christopher Vourlias Russian VOD platform KION has unveiled a slate of original content it will be presenting to buyers at the European Film Market.Launched less than one year ago by telecom giant MTS, the company has so far surpassed expectations, according to Igor Mishin, VP for media business development at MTS and CEO of MTS Media. “We have exceeded all business key performance indicators, in terms of the subscriber base and streaming views,” he said.The company is launching two new feature films and two original series at EFM.“Ophiuchus” is an erotic thriller about a bold and sexually liberated pathologist whose lovers begin to die under mysterious circumstances.

Russian Doll” returns this spring, and Netflix has released some first looks photos for the upcoming season.Season 2 will be set four years after Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan (Charlie Barnett) escaped mortality’s time loop. New episodes will follow the pair as they pass through an unexpected time portal located in Manhattan — causing both to face their pasts.The show’s first season also starred Greta Lee, Yul Vazquez and Elizabeth Ashley.

Minecraft were discovered on a group of youth’s phones.As reported by Moscow Times (via Eurogamer), three teens – Nikita Uvarov, Denis Mikhailenko, and Bogdan Andreyev – were all 14 when they were arrested in 2020 for hanging political leaflets around an FSB building in Siberia. The FSB is Russia’s security service, and is the successor of the KGB.The trio have since been found guilty of “undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities,” which the state says includes plotting to blow up an FSB building they had constructed in Minecraft.This was discovered via the teens’ phones, which – as well as showing a plot to blow up the building in Minecraft – allegedly also included videos of them making pyrotechnics and throwing Molotov cocktails at a wall.Now, Uvarov has been issued a five year sentence to be carried out at a penal colony, whilst Mikhailenko and Andreyev were given three and four-year suspended sentences respectively.Before being given a harsher sentence for his part in the Minecraft “plot”, Uvarov was kept at a pre-trial detention centre where he says he was put under mental and physical pressure.In his closing statement to court, Uvarov said “I am not a terrorist, I am not guilty,” and added that he “would just like to finish my studies, get an education and go somewhere far away from here, somewhere I don’t irritate anyone from the special services.”Earlier in the week, it was announced that the ‘My Wedding Stories‘ pack for The Sims 4 will not launch in Russia due to the country’s homophobic law.

Kamila Valieva is cementing her place as one of the greatest figure skaters of all time and she is only 15-years-old.

The £693 rise in energy bills this April will be a “hammer blow” for Scottish households, consumer campaigners and politicians have warned.

What do you have to say to the Russian people in the event of your death? Filmmaker Daniel Roher (“Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band,”) asks his subject, political Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny, at the beginning of his engrossing new doc “Navalny.” “C’mon,” Navalny scoffs, dismissively, as if highly attuned to Roher’s “gotcha” question he could frame posthumously in the case of the political agitator’s untimely death.

James Austin Johnson once again returned as President Joe Biden on the ‘Saturday Night Live’ cold open, this time as he meets with advisers who give him the goods on Russia’s disinformation machine over Ukraine.

A drama about an undocumented nanny in New York City, a documentary about three exiled dissidents from Tiananmen Square and another doc about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny won top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. Winners were announced Friday evening in a virtual ceremony.

A drama about an undocumented nanny in New York City, a documentary about three exiled dissidents from Tiananmen Square and another doc about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny won top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. Winners were announced Friday evening in a virtual ceremony.“Nanny,” from writer-director Nikyatu Jusu and starring Anna Diop and Michelle Monaghan, won the Grand Jury Prize in the drama category for its depiction of a Senegalese immigrant working for a wealthy family in New York City.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticThe virtual Sundance Film Festival concluded with a virtual awards show — no host this year, just a series of statements and videos parceled out across two hours by Twitter. It was a strangely anti-climactic way of wrapping a low-key festival, while giving winners a chance to prep polite, crew-inclusive acceptance speeches.Among the audience prizes, U.S.

You know, sometimes even elite Russian spies/assassins need to retire. We’ve seen it time after time in films, where the assassin is forced to come out of retirement for one more job.

Members of the region’s Ukrainian community are “terrified” over the threat of a Russian invasion of their homeland.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media WriterA judge on Thursday refused to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Russian chess master who alleged that she was defamed in an episode of the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit.”Nona Gaprindashvili, who rose to prominence as a chess player in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, sued Netflix in federal court in September. She took issue with a line in the series in which a character stated — falsely — that Gaprindashvili had “never faced men.” Gaprindashvili argued that the line was “grossly sexist and belittling,” noting that she had in fact faced 59 male competitors by 1968, the year in which the series was set.Netflix sought to have the suit dismissed, arguing that the show is a work of fiction, and that the First Amendment gives show creators broad artistic license.

NEW YORK -- Within hours of Russian authorities officially adding Alexei Navalny to the country’s registry of terrorists and extremists, a new documentary about the imprisoned Russian opposition leader premiered at the Sundance Film Festival."Navalny” was dramatically added to the festival at the last minute, and announced just the day before it premiered virtually Tuesday evening at Sundance. Directed by Daniel Roher, the film was made with Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic, in late 2020 and early 2021 while he recuperated in Germany after an attempted assassination with nerve agent poisoning.Navalny has said the Kremlin was responsible, as have American intelligence officials and media reports that traced the agents who attacked Navalny to Russia's Federal Security Service.